Hiraeth
by The Readers Muse
Summary: Recognizing Kyle had been like breathing.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own "Terminator: Salvation" or the Terminator series. Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.

 **Authors Note #1:** I wanted to focus a bit on John's thoughts after meeting Kyle.

 **Disclaimer:** adult language, discussion of surgery/injury, angst, drama.

 **Hiraeth**

Recognizing Kyle had been like breathing.

He didn't have to ask.

He knew.

Deep down in the bruised, beaten up marrow of him, he knew.

 _I found him, Mom._

 _I found him and he's perfect._

 _We made it._

The words were young when they sounded out in his head. A reflection of the child he used to be. The one who'd never quite grown out of being desperate for his mother's attention. For wanting praise and all the coddling things mothers were supposed to do and be rather than getting the firm line of her mouth slanting down. Down, down, down always down. Urging him to do it better next time, faster, stronger. Always thinking ahead rather than pausing to celebrate the present.

 _You have to be better than the best, John._

 _Everyone is counting on you._

 _Now do it again._

He smiled small as he shook his head. Chest aching as he swam idly through the haze of drugs and painkillers. Trying to suss out how he felt about it while he had the time to be alone with his own thoughts. The derisive snort that followed was more self-depreciating than anything, but he still allowed himself to own it as the memories clung to the inside of his mind's eye like fractured ghosts.

He knew he still wasn't there yet.

He wasn't good enough.

Not yet.

The anxiety that reality came with was a knife's edge.

Somehow he had to get there.

For Kyle.

For his mother.

For the world

For himself.

For everything he knew he wouldn't live to see.

The only thing he knew for sure was that someday it would all end.

Someday the world and every god damned thing in it would let him rest.

But not yet.

Because Kyle Reese was a sign post.

The ending of one book before the start of another.

He was the sequel of a collection that might have no ending.

A legacy that his children - the one still growing in his wife's belly and the others the Terminator had promised him all those years ago - would continue long after he was gone.

He wanted to say it was a comforting thought.

But he couldn't.

After all, he'd lived it.

* * *

Looking at Kyle had been like looking at his past and his future all at the same time.

It was like coming full circle.

Well, almost.

He knew if he turned over, careful of his stitches, he'd be able to see him curled up below the bed with Star tucked tight against him. He hadn't had to tell him to stay close. Kyle had latched on without permission. Shifting the familiar air currents in their room with that of his own. Quiet, but present.

Kate thought it was cute.

He just wondered what was going on in the kid's head.

And if he'd tell him the truth about it if he asked.

He stretched, suffocating and cautious for a long moment as the world hazed out around the edges in a pleasant sort of way. Toe nails snagging against the worn weave of the blanket he was more or less covered by.

He'd waited his entire life to find him

And now Kyle was here.

That new chapter started now.

And someday soon, it would close.

He would send the man that was his father back in time to die. Without telling him who he was or how much he wished things could be different. How every minute of every day they'd shared he'd had to chew the words back and send him to his mother without even so much as a warning. Something. Anything. Knowing that in less than three days, he would be dead and his mother would be on her own. Scared. Angry. And heavy with two very different types of responsibility.

That was his future, his past and his present.

It was his reality, and he had to own to that.

He sighed. Slowly registering the glow of the overhead lights through the thin of his eyelids. Head angling down as someone - maybe Kyle - made a soft sound in their sleep. Not quite a nightmare, but not far from a whimper either.

He extended his hand off the bed. Stretching it as far as it would go until his fingers were spreading. Wavering thick into the dead space above where he figured Kyle's head would be. Wanting to touch but not quite daring to. Chest still aching fierce and hot like a fever whenever he pulled at his stitches. Wishing he could impart happy thoughts through the air as the sounds gradually settled. Leaving him alone and unsteady in the warm, humid-quiet.

'Tomorrow,' he promised himself as his lashed fluttered heavy. "Tomorrow the rest of my life starts...again."

Funnily enough, this time around the potential for good already weighed out the dread.

* * *

 **A/N:** Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – This story is now complete.

 **Reference:**

\- Hiraeth: a Welsh, untranslatable feeling. Loosely described as a homesickness for a home you cannot return to anymore or a place, which never even existed.


End file.
